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Learning Aesthetics
Everything we know isnt wrong; we just don’t know enough to sort it out…
We are Diminished
I’ve been away from posting for a while, not so much depression as a sense of being lost, and absorbed in the literary. I’ve been reading McCarthy’s Border Trilogy, which seems to argue by demonstration that art, or writing, or perhaps beauty can despite all logic hold against the random meanness of the world. I am persuaded but no less confused; here is something like an obituary for David Foster Wallace from Scott Rettberg.
Personal Branding
Chris Brogan says this is a free the book; I’m not completely sure 15 pages counts is a book, however, they are some of the smartest 15 pages that I’ve read and a longtime. It may be a little over a detailed if you’re not already pretty web savvy, but read it anyway.
Personal Branding for the Business Professional (pdf format).
This may not be a good idea
photo credit: Nesster
Up to this point I’ve been assuming that I didn’t have a student readership, but now that I’m teaching a class…
Oh well, my real point is that we can’t turn off the electricity, so I may as well post this. This Tweet just in form Michael Wesch: “Chacha … new ways to cheat on exams / new reasons to write different kinds of exams: http://chacha.com/“. You got a cellphone or a laptop, you got a question? Thanks to ChaCha you got an answer.
Teaching & Learning
I’m teaching a class this semester. “Viral Video”- a title I’m not terribly happy with, but it was christened over a year ago when it seemed a bit fresher. It’s a blended-learning class, which is to say that most of it is going to happen online. In many ways the class is more about learning to be online than it is about video. That user generated video is, or is becoming, a prime information carrier on the Web is less important than the ’simple’ fact that the Web exists.
For many of us being online is our society, just as much as going to work or coming home, and a good deal a more part of our lives than watching television. We live in an expanded world and frankly we don’t know much more about how to live in the online part of that world than in what we commonly call the real life. One of the up things that’s happened as I try and get this class started it is that I look for a signifier adequate to our situation; talking about ‘real life’ seems increasingly unreal. Talking about Email or the web as though they were somehow different from our daily lives seems a serious error. We simply need to do a better job of living, and we’re blessed with new tools new means and please God new ideas.
One of the students ask, if the class was an experiment. Reflexively I replied that it was a metaphor. It might have been better to say that it was life, or a part of life, like everything else. I suppose one way to think of life is as nature’s experiment. I don’t know that we’d learn much more from that statement than we do from talking about new technologies or the power of the Web; it’s just life. It is what it is, you make it, you listen to it, and it’s not clear whether the making we’re listening is more important.
YouTube
This has been about
Planning
We’re in the midst of reworking the workspace, something like that, and I wanted to contribute:
Good advice
Leadership and teaching are related. Worth a read is A Letter to a New NYC Teaching Fellow by Jose Vilson. Also worth a look is the presentation below (if you click the ‘View on SlideShare’ link on the lower right you can view the presentation in full screen mode).
Must Have
While it’s a bit Yves Klein retro it’s still the killer app for the iPhone
Lively
While IBM and Linden Labs have teamed up to teleport across virtual worlds, Google has entered the arena with Lively. I’m tempted to say, “Too young,” but then again I’m not sure what ‘old enough’ would look like. There’s not as much depth as Second Life, but on the plus side it’s easier to navigate. SL avatars are sexier, if that’s an issue for you. Despite my best efforts to pick Dirk or something cool I seem to have wound up as a furry again and this time short to boot. At least I got the High Noon Sheriff’s vest and a really good hat; sort a Hello Kitty that kicks ass.
Lively seems to run fine on my laptop even with other stuff running in the background. Your current Google account and a quick download will get you up and running. If you’re curious about virtual worlds Lively looks like a good place to start. Here’s a descriptive YouTube video (obnoxious audio track warning).
